


And All The Kings Men

by Razzledazzy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, alternative lance backstory, op gave me 10 seconds, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 15:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10282436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzledazzy/pseuds/Razzledazzy
Summary: Keith can't help but feel like there's something wrong. His instincts just might lead him to something that's right.





	

There were times when Lance was serious. Times when the jokes stopped and he focused his full attention on something. Each time this happened his mouth would set into a firm line, shoulders braced and eyes empty of all humor.

Keith first noticed this occur during a training session with Shiro. Shiro feinted a sweep with his leg and brought his galra arm around to take out the knee Lance had shifted his weight onto. There was a moment where Keith was sure the blue paladin would fall on his ass and make some smartass comment- but Lance didn’t fall. The momentum carried him down but Lance bent with it, springing backwards onto one hand and flipping his feet over his head, kicking Shiro’s jaw in the process.

Banishing his bayard, Lance used both his hands to spring back to his feet, bayard materializing again during the movement until Lance landed with it leveled at Shiro’s head.

The full encounter lasted all of half a second.

The room was silent, Hunk was no longer playing a game in the corner. Pidge had dropped their bayard in shock. Coran had taken a hold of his moustache and was twirling it thoughtfully. The princess however, was looking at Lance with concern in her periwinkle eyes.

“That was a good move, when did you come up with it?” Shiro asked.

It took a moment for the question to register with Lance. In that time, Keith stared openly at the lack of emotion in the blue paladin’s eyes. It was over as quickly as it had begun.

“Something I picked up when I was younger, I used to skateboard. Thought it could be adapted,” Lance shrugged.

“Astonishing!” Corran murmured.

If that had been the end of it, Keith would have let the moment go. But that wasn’t it. Hunk had gone to Lance’s side the moment Shiro ended the training session and placed a large hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Are you alright?” Hunk whispered, but like everything else Hunk did, it was anything but quiet.

“Hasn’t happened in a while. It took me by surprise. It’s fine,” was Lance’s response.

“As long as you’re sure-” Hunk intoned, quietly enough that Keith almost didn’t hear.

 

* * *

 

After that instance, Keith found his eyes scrutinizing Lance’s face whenever he had the chance. Lance’s blue eyes were always full of emotion. Keith often found joy, indignation, humor, and even sarcasm reflected there. More than a few times Lance had caught him staring and gave him a curious look. This was one of those times.

They were on a supply mission, sent to an arid, mostly abandoned planet in order to find an ore that Corran needed in order to supply some of the Castle's offensive capabilities. Only Lance and Keith had been assigned to the mission. The blue lion was to haul the material back and the red lion was to fly support and run interference if they encountered Galra forces. Hunk and Pidge had been sent on a similar mission but had opted for the tropical planet as their destination.

“You know Keith, if I didn’t know any better I’d say you were checking me out,” Lance teased, wiggling his eyebrows at the red pilot as they walked across the barren ground.

“Don’t be so ridiculous,” Keith rolled his eyes and looked at the ground. His resolve not to look at Lance lasted for all of seven ticks before his eyes were seeking out the now familiar blue ones yet again.

“See!” Lance crowed, pointing at Keith ridiculously. “You just did it again!”

“I did not!” Keith answered hotly. Luckily for him, the heat of the planet had already flushed his face and the blush he felt rising to his cheeks went unnoticed by the other paladin.

“You keep staring at me!” Lance pressed. “You’ve been doing it for weeks.”

Keith’s stomach dropped like a rock. If Lance had noticed… there was no way that his new fascination had gone unnoticed by the rest of the crew.

“I’m just concerned about you!” Keith yelled back, bringing Lance up short as the other stopped walking.

“What? Why!”

“You freaked me out that day you fought Shiro, okay!” Keith answered, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Are you happy now! I was concerned! I saw your eyes and it was like you weren’t even home. You weren’t yourself.”

“That’s what this has been about?”

Keith huffed and turned on his heel, walking away from Lance and the elemental signature of the metal they were searching for.

“Keith wait!”

Keith ignored Lance and marched forward until he heard Lance throw down the device they were using the locate the metal and run after him.

“Don't follow me!” Keith yelled without turning around, eyes looking toward the horizon of the planet where one of the binary suns had already set, turning the sky purple with its lone remaining sun in a state of twilight.

“Keith stop!” Lance shouted, running forward and pulling Keith back just as the crust of the planet broke beneath Lance's foot.

Lance shoved Keith, sending the red paladin falling backwards into the dirt in shock as the dirt crumbled underneath Lance’s other foot, the paladin immediately sinking down to his knees in what Keith now recognized as quicksand.

Stupid! Stupid! He’d lived in the desert for so long he should have recognized the darker hue of the sand- should have been paying attention. Shouldn’t have walked away from Lance…  
“Lance!” Keith screamed, getting back to his feet.

Lance’s blue eyes locked with Keith’s, and for the second time they were empty. Nothing bright reflected from them. Only a shadowed emptiness.

“Lance!” Keith screamed again, grabbing onto Lance’s hand and pulling him away from the quicksand. There was resistance and a sucking sound, followed by a pop when Keith hauled Lance free.

It took all of Keith’s strength to free Lance, and it wasn’t until they both tipped over onto the dry yet firm ground surrounding the quicksand that Keith knew they would be okay.

Lance’s eyes were still empty.

“Lance? Lance,” Keith repeated, ripping off his glove to check on Lances pulse. He hadn’t been in the quicksand long enough to sink, but the look of his eyes gave Keith enough cause to worry. “It’ll be okay Lance,” Keith murmured, pressing his bare hand to the skin of Lance’s cheek.

It took almost a full minute for Lance to come back to himself, during which Keith dared not move either of them.

“Keith?” Lance questioned from his eerily familiar position in Keith’s arms.  
“Hi, idiot,” Keith huffed, relief evident in his tone as he pulled Lance to his feet again. “You did it again, that thing that makes me worry about you.”

Lance rubbed the back of his neck, pulling off his helmet to take a deep breath. Helmet under his arm, Lance rose to his feet.

By that time, the second sun was close to setting, and Keith was struck by the visual of Lance holding his helmet under his arm and looking into the sunset.

“We’ve got about an hour and a half until that sun sets. I suggest we find a cave or our lions.” Lance said quietly. As Lance moved to put his helmet back on his head, Keith lay his palm over it to stop him.

“Lance-”

The blue paladin sighed and straightened up, “I know Keith. I’ll tell you, but we need to find shelter first.”

It only took another 30 minutes of walking for them to stumble upon a cave that Keith deemed suitable, Lance set about gathering firewood to prepare for the binary planet’s evening temperature drop. They worked in complete silence, each movement compensating for and accounting for each other as they prepared the space. Keith set the device they had been following to charge, and Lance readied what food they had.

It wasn’t until Keith was sipping at the poorly cooked green soup that Lance spoke again.

“I don’t like being immobilized.”

Keith gave Lance a look and continued to eat, content to let the blue paladin explain himself.

“I arrived at the Garrison under a scholarship, it was part of a special program that was meant to train up… I wouldn’t say leaders, but it was supposed train us to be advanced soldiers under complete Garrison command.”

Lance stopped, and looked at Keith for encouragement to continue. The red paladin just nodded and reached out a hand to steady Lance’s shoulder. As Lance began to speak again Keith kept his hand on the blue paladin.

“I was perfect for the program because I’d already lost a leg as a child. It made it easier for them to take the other leg as well. I’m not complaining, the prosthetics they provided were really useful. We could jump higher, run faster, pilot better- all up until the point where you did something the Garrison didn’t like. My friend, she… well it isn’t important what she did. What’s important is that they remotely deactivated her prosthetics and released a sedative into her bloodstream. She reacted badly to it and died. The program was shut down after that.”

Lance continued to speak as if to get the entire story out at once, “You remember how they tried to sedate Shiro because of his arm? I suspect that they wanted to reverse engineer the way Shiro’s prosthesis worked for the next incarnation of the program. I couldn’t let them do that. I already looked up to Shiro and I didn’t want that kind of burden on his shoulders.”

Keith set his bowl down on the stone floor of the cave and took Lance’s hand in his own. Words refused to come to mind. There was something he could say, anything that he could say- nothing would be enough. Keith had known enough loss to know that to be true.

“That’s horrible.” Keith said after a moment, something about the story rang the same as his own. Yet the situation was entirely different. “I’m glad you’re here with us Lance,” Keith said, fingers twining in Lance’s. For once he didn’t look away, but held the full piercing blue gaze. He owed that to Lance.

Lance laughed and rubbed at his eye with the heel of his hand. “For some reason I expected you to respond differently. This is a pretty big secret.”

Keith rolled his eyes, knocking his shoulder into Lance. “Yeah, well we’re partners aren’t we? I’ll keep your secrets.”

Lance blushed at that, squeezing Keith’s hand in response. An acknowledgement or approval. Who was to say.

“Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you so concerned about me? I mean, Pidge is going through hard times as well, as is Shiro… but you focused on me instead.”

Keith went silent for a minute, Lance was right. Shouldn’t he have prioritized their leader’s mental state over Lance’s?

“I don’t- I don’t know,” Keith admitted, looking down at a scar on Lance’s hand. Absently, his thumb ran over the raised line. “I-”

“You don’t have to answer,” Lance shrugged, giving Keith a look out of the corner of his eyes. “I think I already know.”

“Well share with the class because I’m fucking clueless,” Keith answered hotly, a blush rising to his cheeks again.

“You like me,” Lance teased.

Keith scoffed, “I don’t-”

Wait.

Oh shit-

Keith’s jaw clamped shut, eyes looking from Lance’s hand to his own, both still clasping each other and their proximity. Lance had made him dinner tonight. Lance had risked his life to make sure Keith was clear of the quicksand. Lance who had offered everything and asked nothing in return from him.

“I- I..” Keith stuttered.

It hit Keith all at once. The horror he’d felt realizing that Lance had stepped into quicksand. The worry he’d felt for weeks over something as small as a shift in Lance’s eyes. The longer Keith sat there, slack jawed and contemplating his own feelings the more Lance’s face went from joking to serious.

“Wait, Keith do yo-”

“Shhhh!” Keith covered Lance’s mouth with a hand. “I’m thinking.”

Lance’s faced heated under Keith’s hand, and Keith noticed a twinge in his chest.

Oh, oh.

Keith’s hand slid from Lance’s mouth to the back of his neck, pulling in his face in and pressing a kiss to the paladin’s lips. Lance responded to the contact, but not as enthusiastically as Keith would have expected. Part of him, as subdued as it might be, thought that Lance would kiss with just as much passion as he did everything else.

“You figure something out with that?” Lance teased, he had shifted a little closer. Which was the only signal Keith had to how his newly discovered affections had been received.

“I- Maybe?” Keith spluttered, embarrassment clear in the red on his face now that the temperature had started to drop.

Lance waved a hand, “Don’t worry. You can try finding out tomorrow.” The smirk on his face was something Keith was sure he wouldn’t mind seeing for the rest of the night. If only it hadn’t been at his expense.

“Yeah sure, tomorrow. Now budge over, it’s too cold to sleep separately,” he said, waving a reflective blanket in Lance’s face.

Getting ready for bed was not quite as gracefully effortless as preparing dinner had been, but Lance and Keith worked around each other just the same. It was… new. In a sense. Now that Keith had a new perspective on his own feelings. All he had to do now was to get through the night without doing anything wildly embarrassing.

Tomorrow was a new day, filled with new chances, and Keith couldn’t wait to pursue them all.

**Author's Note:**

> So like, apparently gazing into someone’s eyes for 15 minutes greatly increases your chance of falling in love with them. I don’t know. I was on a road trip and wanted to write some Klance and this is what my brain came up with in the writer's equivalent of ‘op gave me 10 seconds’. (Originally Keith was going to die so I guess this is a great alternative.) This was written, hmm, ten days after the first season came out but I never got around to making it fit for public consumption before now. Oops.
> 
> Check out my profile for links you can find me at.


End file.
